Cruising Sailor on Shore Leave, 11x14 inches watercolor on cotton paper by Kenney Mencher

ORIGINAL WORK NOT A REPRODUCTION

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This original erotic watercolor of a young young sailor is cropped to create an interesting composition by cropping the figure and working with the edges of the picture plane to create an asymmetrical and interesting composition.

It's an old cliché in gay art and culture. The homoerotic fantasies surrounding sailors are expressed in the art of Paul Cadmus and musicals such as "South Pacific," Gene Kelly in "On the Town," and even in novels such as "Moby Dick," and "Billy Budd." We have this fascination. When I looked it up on Reddit I came across some really great answers,

"It pre-dates the United States and was present in the English Royal Navy as well. The actually reason is very simple. Sailors were sometimes, and more often reputed, to be prison gay. That is they were removed from an environment with large numbers of women for months, sometimes later years, at a time and turned to alternative sexual practices. A captain or officer might have a wife aboard a ship but everyone else was pretty much on their own (you can find these women by looking at the quartermasters records and seeing who was drawing double rations)."

and

"I once heard that San Francisco became a "gay Mecca" due to sailors being dishonorably discharged for being gay, and rather than go home and face their family, they stayed at the port they were dropped off. Do you think this could of contributed to the stereotype? Also, 'In The Navy' by the Village People, probably contributed to the public's perception."

Regardless of this, it is a hot theme in gay art.

I love working in watercolor almost as much as in oils. Much of my watercolor technique was taught to me when I was in my teens in the 1980's studying with master watercolorist Irwin Greenberg while at Art and Design High School in New York. Greenberg first introduced me to the watercolor of John Singer Sargent and I studied the hell out of his work!

This work is painted by first sketching out the figure with a lithographic crayon and then applying successive layers of watercolor over the crayon to create shading and color.

The paper that this is painted on is called Rives BFK, which is a type of heavy cotton printmaking paper that won't degrade over time and should hold the color really well for at least fifty to one hundred years without fading, especially if this is framed behind glass.

Warning these are the only sites authorized to sell my art:

http://www.kenneymencher.com/

https://www.etsy.com/shop/kmencher

https://www.kenney-mencher.net/

http://www.kenney-mencher.com/

This is a standard size so you may be able to find an "open back" frame kit on the web to frame it at a significantly lower cost than a frame shop.